Prior to my reply to Rebecca Rosenblatt Gilliar, it is important to note the following:
- Babylon is installing LED lights in all 13,250 of its street lamps reflecting a shift across Long Island for energy-efficient lighting. The additional advantage of LEDs in Babylon resulted in making the town safer. The projected annual energy savings is up to $700,000.
- Smithtown installed LEDs in all of its 12,000 street lights saving $520,000 in energy costs annually.
- Hempstead finished installing LEDs in its 50,000 street lights last year. The projected cost savings over a 20-year period will be 43 million.
- The Village of Hempstead installed 2,700 LED lights last year as part of a policing initiative.
- Islip installed LED lights in all of its 25,000 street lights saving $1 million in energy costs annually.
- Huntington installed LED lights in 16,700 of their 20,000 street lights savings $700,000 in utility costs annually. They plan to convert the rest of the street lights with LED lights.
- Oyster Bay installed LEDs in 10,000-12,000 of 18,000-20,000 street lights saving $83,000 annually and plan to convert the rest.
- Long Beach installed LEDs in 1,100 of their 1,862 street lights saving $182,325 annually.
- Riverhead installed LEDs in 2,167 of the town’s 6,500 lights, reducing costs by half. They plan to convert the rest of the street lights to LEDs.
- Brookhaven installed LEDs in 4,000-5,000 of 43,000 lights saving $200,000 in energy costs annually. They plan to convert all 43,000 lights installing LEDs.
- North Hempstead installed LEDs in 126 street lights they are considering installing more as replacement bulbs.
- Glen Cove installed LEDs in 100 of 1,667 street lights saving $5,000-$6,000 annually. They plan to convert the rest of the street lights to LEDs.
- South Hampton installed LEDs in a small number of their 3,000 street lights. They are now considering installing many more.
- East Hampton considering an energy efficient lighting program incorporating LEDs.
- Shelter Island plans to install LEDs in their towns 12 street lights.
- Southold installed LEDs in all of its 220 street lights, saving $10,120 annually.
- Professor E. Fred Schubert of the Electrical Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, stated that LED lights are less harmful to the environment to the antecedents. They do not contain the mercury of fluorescent bulbs, produce less waste by lasting longer, and they use less energy, which, means less fossil fuel is burned. The majority of all Long Island’s electricity comes from fossil fuels.
- Most recently Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a Smart Street Lighting Program calling for more than 500,000 LED street lights to be installed throughout the state by 2025 in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money.
As expected, it is always foreseeable that a few people will complain. That is the nature of people experiencing a change.
There is nothing wrong with anyone of them openly making their objections known.
The problem that the undersigned finds disturbing is that their complaints become personal and sometimes frustrating because the change was made and we all have to accommodate and compromise to those changes.
I am fortunate enough to have an office and residence in both Great Neck and Boca Raton, Fla.
We have LED lighting throughout our gated communities in Florida as we have now in the Village of Great Neck.
We are able to block out lights in our bedrooms in both New York and Florida using special shades that are readily available to everyone at a reasonable cost. Therefore, by accommodating and compromising, the people that are complaining can block out all of the lighting the same way we were able to accomplish that in both Florida and in New York.
It would have cost a lot less to purchase the proper shades to block out the light than bring a lawsuit against the village’s four trustees.
Furthermore, Mrs. Gilliar’s statements are technically incorrect and the use of the word “may,” as an example, does not mean technically or medically, that there is a connection between LEDs and any type of illness or injury.
One should never take a subjective statement or opinions that are not peer reviewed and take them as fact. That is the fault of many of the objecting individuals who are making statements that are also not scientifically correct.
Dr. C. J. Abraham
Technical Director
SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY SERVICES LTD
Here are a couple facts to add to that list. Los Angeles started out with 4000K street lights (neutral white) and is saving an ADDITIONAL 30% in energy since moving to LED street lights in the warmer white part of the spectrum, 3000K and less, because the reduced glare allows less light to be just as effective. Davis, CA also lowered their electricity use 30% when they pulled 4000K and put in 2700K in residential areas instead, and this is at a time when warmer lighting was about 20% less bright that 4000K at the same wattage. Now there is almost no difference.
The studies continue to mount showing the harm that comes from suppressing melatonin as is most pronounced in certain parts of the blue spectrum that make up a large portion of the light coming from more neutral white LEDs. We can buy thick blackout shades but why do that when you can spend 30% less on energy, see even better, have better neighborhood awareness at night, and not have to wake up in dark caves?
This is what LED street light look like in neighborhoods where you do not have to get the thickest blackout shades. Tucson is saving 80% in energy over the previous HPS lighting and doing so with far less glare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJL-WPwjMQM
The shades that Dr Abraham states to be installed does not take into account the effect of these high intensity LED’s on the trees and wildlife that the shades will not have any effect to stop the excessive light to effect their well being.
“Scientific Advisory Services, in New York offers expert witness testimony and consulting to insurance companies, municipalities, government agencies and the legal profession involving human factors.”
Defend your clients all you want. The world is waking up to the nightmare of blue-rich, white, glaring LED streetlights and headlights. All your defense of them won’t stop them from harming people, plants or animals. I guess Harvard, the AMA, NASA, Sierra Club, the Audubon Society have no links to science. The LED lighting industry are giving these lights away for free in some towns because they know that they are garbage. And please don’t insult us telling us to go out and by black out curtains. How will running our air conditioners all summer long with our windows shut tight help with saving energy resources? So go ahead, defend you client and discount people who are already aware of not only how ugly these lights are, but also how they are already harming our ecosystem. These lights, especially the horrible choice of 4000K Great Neck’s careless leaders have chosen, are going to be short lived. Hope they’re paying you well! Here’s an article from 2010 from the LED industry itself. They knew back then these lights are harmful. Not good. https://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2010/11/light-and-human-health-led-risks-highlighted.html
“The additional advantage of LEDs in Babylon resulted in making the town safer.” Want to back that claim up? A perception of safety is not the thing itself. And the suggestion people purchase shades to deal with light trespass is ludicrous. The only “scientifically correct” claim you have here is reduced energy consumption. The “tough, deal with it” attitude isn’t going to win any support.
And you expect those shades you mention to help all the outdoor flora and fauna subjected to these hideous lights?
Besides the now well established problems associated with circadian rhythm, even lights prior to the advent of blue-rich leds have been problematic, blinding us to the appearance of a genuine nocturnal experience.
Allow me to wear my expert witness hat here. I write a column that appears on the Chicago Tribune Weather Page called the Planet Watch, describing the rise/set times of the major planets as well as when/where best seen. It is an enticement for people to look at the night sky but in modern metro environments those planets along with only the moon and a handful of the brightest stars are visible at all because of indiscriminately situated lighting.
Hardly anyone even bothers to look up at night anymore because, as a neighbor of mine once told me when I had my telescope out, “why do you bother to study what’s there, I look up from from my back yard and just see a few stars, what could be out there”?
Speaking of telescopes I once built one for “Star Wars” creator George Lucas which I was able to tell him was capable of detecting galaxies over 300 million light-years out but not if near city lights. How valuable would the scope be on Long Island compared to California wine country which is fortunately the location of Skywalker Ranch? That intergalactic light started out almost 75 million years before the first dinosaur, continued through the entire Mesozoic Era and the 65 million years so far of the Cenozoic Era only to be intercepted in the last 50th of a thousandth of a second by lights needlessly aimed skyward.
It’s interesting that the title of this article complains about a lack of scientific facts and then fails to provide any. What is presented here are not facts, but a long list of forecasted savings with one opinion of an engineer (not a medical doctor or biological scientist) thrown in at the end.
It is a fact that 535 doctors with the American Medical Association have unanimously warned against the health risks of LED streetlights above 3000 Kelvin. It is a fact that the French health ministry warned about the photo-toxic effects of LED’s to the human retina and stated that bare LED’s can exceed the discomfort threshold by 1,000X. It is a fact that a multi-decade Harvard study of over 100,000 women found a 14% increase in breast cancer in the most brightly lit areas as opposed to the least. The proposed mechanism was melatonin suppression by artificial light and it is a fact that blue-rich, high-Kelvin LED’s suppress melatonin at five times the rate of warmer incandescents per the Univ. of Haifa.
Dr. Abraham…would you not call these articles scientific?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140725080408.htm
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/outdoor-light-night-breast-cancer/
https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm-high-intensity-street-lights
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/light-pollution-altering-plant-and-animal-behaviour_en.html
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-2-march-april
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridaineparnell/2017/11/23/good-night-to-the-night-leds-are-increasing-light-pollution-not-fixing-it/#189d79bb69cf
Sushie said a few months ago when this person decide to lawyer up over led lightning. I said at that time she could buy shades or blinds but now we speak about vegetation. If some of you people visited some Carribean Islands such as Aruba you will see LED lightening used all over the Island without harm to the vegetation and for years they have had it. Leave it to Long Islanders to make busy with a non issue. All the arm chair experts living there . I guess you have all gotten over the cancer scare from overhead power lines and cell phones. Now there is a new cause celeb. If I was in charge I would have no street light on the streets where people complain.
http://www.softlighthouston.com explains the issues and shows how much better lighting can be.
I get the impression Sushie people on here are not arm chair experts. They are people that genuinely care about wildlife, health and the ecosystem, they seem like people who are very well informed and educated and are trying to raise awareness about this disaster.
Why does saving money come before human health, our wildlife and the ecosystem? What’s in it for our councils and governments around the world that they must install this rubbish and dismiss concerns? These lights are bad. Why install them when you will have to replace them eventually with more tax payers money because they are so bad? Why are so many people suffering around the world and made ill because of LED technology, many with no previous ill health? See lightaware.org in the UK. Why do so many people dislike them, find them excessively bright, too intense, too uncomfortable with far too much glare? Why are people complaining about feeling unwell and being unable to sleep or tolerate them if they are OK.
Is Dr. C. J. Abraham,Technical Director, SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY SERVICES LTD going to read the comments here, no one seems impressed with the article. Why have such a broad sweeping heading for the article ”LED opposition not supported by scientific facts”. What about the many academic peer reviewed papers out there regarding the issues with LED? The AMA report alone is only the tip of the ice berg and even that is sufficient. We have much more to learn about how detrimental these lights are. Why are concerns dismissed in this article?
Why on earth should anyone have to live as a prisoner in their home with blinds down because of these street lights? The mention of black out blinds as a solution is beyond me. Why should that woman be confined to her home in the evening and all night? Is she not entitled to be outside specifically on her own property. It’s not like she has a problem with the sun. She has a problem with a product that is being pushed on all of us, and more and more research is pointing to how detrimental this type of light is. It only takes a moments exposure to upset the circadian rhythm and suppress melatonin, it only takes a moments exposure to cause eye pain, nausea, migraine, skin rashes etc for those who are sensitive. The old sodium streetlights didn’t have the same affect on people.
Sushie, the onus is on you to prove there have been no detrimental side effects in Aruba because you brought it up. What kind of LED’s do they use there? What is the Kelvin Temperature and the CCT? Are they shielded? Are they dimmed? Have you spoken to the a botanist from the Island to prove that there is no damage to plants? What about the nocturnal animals? How are they fairing under lights that reduce melatonin so drastically? Let’s remember wildlife cannot pull the shades, wear sleeping masks, or go to the drugstore to buy sleep medicine. We are ALL going to lawyer up against LED lighting, just like we did over second hand smoke and asbestos and lead. If you were in charge I would send you a thank you note for turning off all the lights on my street.
I’m sure my two kids appreciate not having a dad who can take them outside because the useless LED street lights are on. Glasses do not help with flickering LED’s because you can’t filter dirty electricity.
One glaring misrepresentation in Dr. Abraham’s report: The Town of Huntington DID NOT install LED street lighting in its conversion but high efficiency induction lighting lamp fixtures. These are partially shielded and much softer. There is virtually no glare and no light trespass.
LED’s installed in Lawrence,NY. 6000K.
One person hit and killed on a block with the new lights..the lights may or may not be a proximate cause.The lawyers will figure it out.
Good news though..every Lawrence resident is saving about $10 a year.
Hey! LEDs in 4,000-5,000 of 43,000 lights saving $200,000 in energy costs annually. https://www.hptechnicalsupportphonenumber.com/blog/how-to-fix-hp-printer-error-code-ox83c0000a-message/